"Like a number of others who have posted I am a life long Liberal/Lib Dem. I first canvassed in the Feb 1974 election and have stood for councils numerous times, and was a County Councillor for 4 years. I used to give thousands to my local party, hundreds to Cowley St. No more. My membership is up for renewal in January and I will be paying the minimum that allows me to be a voting member..."
- John Doran, Liberal Democrat Voice (16 November 2010)
One of the advantages of being fairly cynical, and having been encouraged to be a sceptic at university - many thanks to Dr Janacek, my statistics lecturer and academic advisor, for that - is that I tend to wonder about someone's motivation.
And so, when I discovered that a former Surrey county councillor had taken the opportunity of Nick Clegg's radio call-in show on LBC to attack him, I did what anyone might have done (like journalists ought to?), and Googled him, finding the above quote rather easily.
So, Mr Doran doesn't like Nick Clegg - it's a free world. But don't let anyone believe for a moment that he's a recent convert to that view...
Of course its not recent. Not at all sure what the point is. I reached the end of my tether recently with the attacks on the poor and secret courts. I had been trying to follow the advice of colleagues and fight from within but after 2 1/2 years of this coalition I had decided not to renew my membership due in January, coincidentally around the time LBC started advertising the Call Clegg programme. I hope you'll do me the courtesy of posting my comment.
ReplyDeleteJohn,
DeleteOf course your comment gets published, you're hardly in breach of my comments policy.
But, in fairness, the point that I'm making is that you've been disillusioned with our Party Leader for some time, so to dramatise your intervention, as the enemies of liberal democracy have, was a mite excessive.
"Someone who doesn't like Nick Clegg attacks Nick Clegg" isn't that much of a story, in relative terms.
But, as I've already noted, you're entitled to your opinion, just as I am entitled to note that yours is a long held one.